What if, back during the height of the cold war, the United States built a gigantic interstellar spaceship and sent it on a century-long journey to Proxima Centauri with 600 of our “best and brightest” citizens on board? The answer to that hypothetical question is explored in Syfy’s upcoming mega-event series Ascension. The show will be broadcast over 3 consecutive nights: Monday, December 15, Tuesday, December 16, and Wednesday, December 17, and is intended to be a back-door pilot for a possible recurring series.
Almost everything in the trailer screams Battlestar Galactica. Ascension is a sweeping space opera about a small band of humans searching for a new home, all the while fighting an enemy from within. It’s a formula that made BSG a huge success and it looks like that formula is going to work every bit as well here.
In what is probably not a coincidence, Brian Van Holt’s Captain Denninger even says to his wife, played by BSG alum Tricia Helfer, “There are vipers among us.” If you’re not familiar with Battlestar Galactica, and you’re missing out if you’re not, the fighter ships used in the show were called Vipers. Tricia Helfer played a manipulative and deadly character on Battlestar and she’s taking on similar duties aboard the USS Ascension – I think that could work quite well.
So say we all.
For everything we’ve got on Ascension (which is pretty much everything that’s out there), CLICK HERE. Also, click the links below. Links don’t click themselves.
Ascension premieres December 15 at 9/8c on Syfy
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Senior Editor for Three If By Space. Tom first became interested in science fiction & science as a very young child thanks to his parents. His earliest memories of enjoying scifi were sitting with his dad watching first-run episodes of the original Star Trek. Although a fan of nearly all forms of scripted television, Tom’s preferences skew heavily toward hard science fiction.
